The Left Hand's Path - Crane Story Paths

[Togashi Jo]

[Doji Pheelyp]

[Hendrick]

For the record, the Crane actually did not do anything wrong. Gaijin pepper was being manufactured and stored in an Ivory Kingdoms embassy. Now the fact that there was no ambassador there or the fact the castle was not on any maps is immaterial. The most honorable Crane clan followed imperial law.

[gambit]

Harriers . Also Dragon hate makes me happy, just like the end of Crane-Lion alliance. Cranes needs to be what they used to be (Even more now without Paneki).

[Doji Pheelyp]

[Daramere]

[Asahina Shimato]

I think you will agree that the Crane are at a point where adhering to spirit as well as letter of the Imperial Law has clearly proven ineffective in bringing them closer to the - Dragon occupied! - throne.

And as the Daigotsu have conclusively proven, the only language the Iweko understand is bullying them into concessions, it seems, and the Crane also have the means to do that (Once we bring back the Harriers.)

[KakitaKaori]

The story team made very clear this doesn't bring back the Harriers. Definitely not the point anyway, so not really worth bothering about. The Harriers, or the Crane, won't bully the the Iweko, and there are much better clans at 'bullying' anyway.

The Harriers were important, and kind of a dark secret, but I think the cool thing about them, in general, is that they /knew/ what they did was dishonorable. They /cared/ that it was dishonorable too. They didn't have a psychology that made it all rest easy upon them. They really, truly believed that, in a world where many other threats to the Crane felt free to use dishonorable tactics all the time, the Crane had to have some means of fighting back, and if, in order for the Crane to survive, someone had to sacrifice their honor to keep the rest of the clans' hands free, the harriers would choose to do so.

I'm sure every Harrier was well aware that if they were caught, they would be required to commit seppuku. That was as much part of it as anything. They knew that someone had to understand these dishonorable ways in order for the rest of the Clan to keep their honor...and in some ways, their innocence. If they, themselves, didn't think that what they were doing was actually dishonorable, then it wouldn't be a sacrifice that they made for their clan...it would just be them thinking the rest of the clan and their honor was just lip service. And that is not so cool...much more Scorpion.

Once the Harriers were exposed, it is likely that, officially, any Crane tied to them that escaped the explosion of Kosaten Shiro were ordered to commit seppuku by Domotai. The dishonor to the Crane couldn't be allowed to stand without resolution, and the Harriers would /know/ that. That was the deal all along. By this point in the timeline, in the "official" understanding of the Empire, there are no Crane Harriers and blood has wiped clean the slate for the Crane.

That said, those who sacrificed themselves and their honor to become Harriers had family members who knew them, and knew what they had sacrificed and why. Even Domotai knew...she just understood 'her' side of the Harrier deal. Even with full loyalty to the Crane, and full belief in their ideals, those members of the Crane who understood the Harriers would be angry at the Dragon that such an event occurred, and that it cost the lives of such extremely loyal and self-sacrificing Crane, as well as leaving the Crane at a strategic disadvantage against the dishonorable clans the Harriers had been trained to fight. In particular, for the Dragon to do this was especially galling. Previous to the destruction of the harriers the Dragon freely made alliances with the Scorpion, and after this incident, the Dragon developed close relationships to the Spider. Both of those clans used dishonorable tactics without the slightest remorse, and were both also clans that the Crane would most desperately need the Harriers to be able to counter.

So there is logic beyond 'But Harriers' for the Crane, or members of the Crane, to seek revenge. And motivation for them to seek revenge on the political front, since it is not the Harriers themselves who would be seeking revenge, but those who been protected by them or had close or family ties to to the Harriers.

I personally think that the perfect revenge to be put onto the Dragon is to either 1) Force the Dragon to request, publicly, of the Crane or multiple other clans for assistance against an enemy using dishonorable tactics, and then, publicly, respond that the Crane is unable to assist them because we have no samurai who would ever dream of studying and understanding such tactics in order to help thwart them, OR 2) For the Dragon to be forced into using some sort of less than perfectly honorable tactics back against their enemy, and then having the Crane expose /their/ dishonorable tactics in the court.

Revenge is best, after all, served cold...preferably fanned gently with a suitably appropriate haiku.

[Doji Pheelyp]

[Daramere]

There is a nobility of sorts in sacrificing one's honor in order to protect one's Clan (because, at the end of the day, neither honor nor honour are stronger than steel ... or gunpowder). Oh, and it's important to get revenge. So ... did I accidentally stumble onto the Scorpion forums?

I think that this sort of reasoning is a big part of why the ST ultimately axed the Harriers. Part of the point of honor and bushido is that you don't resort to these sorts of tactics. If, when the chips are down, the Crane will do whatever they need to do to win/survive, even if it's dishonorable, then how honorable, really, are they in the first place? There is no "death before dishonor" - the Crane Clan with Harriers has decided to, on a systematic basis, act dishonorably in order to gain military advantage. They don't do it as much as, say, the Scorpion, but basically only because of tactical and strategic considerations. They become, as either Fred or Spooky put it (don't recall which, sorry) "Scorpion with good PR." The Scorpion are dishonorable, and everyone knows it. The Spider are beyond dishonorable. But the Crane? The Crane are supposed to be different. If the Crane, the very definition of honor (or, at least, half of that definition, along with the Lion), are really just dishonorable samurai with good PR, and the luxury of having the resources to feign honor most of the time, then does honor really mean anything? If even the Crane, who (through Doji) largely created Rokugani culture and tradition and honor, don't really behave honorably when it comes down to it, then why should anyone else bother? It matters for the Crane to behave dishonorably, in a way that it does not for the Scorpion or the Spider, because the Crane matter in a way that those Clans do not.

Or, you know, you could think that all of the above is nonsense, in which case the Dragon could just go ahead and expose the Harriers when the Crane seek "revenge" on the Dragon for imagined slights. And then we can all squabble with each other over said imagined slights while Jigoku rules the Empire, which is exactly what they want us to do.